Audio 3:43
Residents fight eviction at an Adelaide caravan park

Caroline WinterUpdated
Tue 2 Jul 2013, 1:18 PM AEST

There's a David and Goliath battle brewing at a caravan park along Adelaide's coast. Up to 40 permanent residents face eviction after the local Council in Brighton decided to redevelop the park. They say they'll continue to fight to save their homes.

Transcript

SCOTT BEVAN: There's a David and Goliath battle brewing at a caravan park along Adelaide's coast.

Up to 40 permanent residents face eviction after the local council in Brighton decided to redevelop the park.

Many have invested their life savings in their properties, and say they'll be left homeless if they're forced to leave.

Caroline Winter reports.

CAROLINE WINTER: Lenny Gough and his wife bought a van at the beach-front Brighton Caravan Park in Adelaide's west three years ago.

LENNY GOUGH: Around the world, I've lived in a couple of places and this small community here, what can I say? It's just a beautiful place to be and beautiful people to be with.

CAROLINE WINTER: At the time he was told there were no long-term plans to redevelop the park but that's all changed.

LENNY GOUGH: If I leave here, me and my wife, we leave here with our suitcases. I haven't got a penny left. I've invested every penny into this unit.

CAROLINE WINTER: The couple, and more than 30 permanent residents, are being evicted to make way for a $3 million redevelopment ahead of the peak tourism season.

They're leases had been extended until next March, but Council decided to bring that forward, meaning residents had to move out by the end of June.

Now they're on a week to week lease and resident Marilyn Pearson says it's taking its toll.

MARILYN PEARSON: The cost health wise and emotionally to the residents has been huge. I've just come off a couple of weeks stress leave, other people have had existing health issues that have exacerbated.

CAROLINE WINTER: Marilyn Pearson says residents agree the park needs to be redeveloped, but that not all options have been discussed or all voices heard.

MARILYN PEARSON: Council has talked a lot about us, but council has never talked with us. We've been asking since our very first deputation for a forum where we can be involved in the discussion and it's not been refused, it's just been ignored.

CAROLINE WINTER: Ken Rolland is Mayor of the Holdfast Bay Council.

He and two fellow councillors support the residents.

KEN ROLLAND: These people are relatively disadvantaged, they have put their life's savings into this property and we have accepted that all along. We should show some empathy and sympathy for their cause and, rather than evict them into the streets or into wherever they can go, we should be doing something to compensate them, something to find a solution which benefits them.

CAROLINE WINTER: He says the residents occupy about 10 per cent of the park and the rest is ideal for development.

But those opposed argue it's not Council's job to provide social housing.

Holdfast Bay Councillor Tim Looker.

TIM LOOKER: Councils aren't in the business of affordable housing. Our advice is that this place will return a million dollars a year profit. That is 5 per cent a rate. Now, if I want to tell the rest of our rate payers, saying we're going to jack up your rates because council's going into affordable housing, I don't think they'd think very much of that.

CAROLINE WINTER: The State Government had stepped in and asked the council to reconsider the redevelopment.

But at a special council meeting last night, a motion to have an independent person to review the decision was voted down.

Lenny Gough says the issue is tearing residents apart.

LENNY GOUGH: It's the council's job to look after the community, to look after the people, after its constituents. To take into account people's needs. These are people's lives that you're dealing with, we're not just numbers, we're not just pieces on a chess board where you can move around, we are human beings and this council is making us feel like we're not human beings.

CAROLINE WINTER: The council says firm plans on the redevelopment are likely to be drawn up in the next few weeks.

In the meantime, residents say they'll continue whatever fight they have left in them to keep their homes.